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I'll say what I said on the other thread - If you want to present an argument against quarantine being needed or warranted, please go ahead. Checking in on the

by Nursie 5y ago

I'll say what I said on the other thread - If you want to present an argument against quarantine being needed or warranted, please go ahead. Checking in on the app is the least intrusive of the three options - quarantine under guard (usually in a hotel, like the one I'm in right now), quarantine at home with police visits tio ensure compliance, or quarantine at home checking in to the app once or twice a day. In this context, getting hysterical about the least intrusive option is weird.

chitowneats 5y ago
How did Australians become like this? In my imagination, my American ancestors were quite similar to yours. And yet...
- Nursie 5y ago
  Become like what? Do you have an argument against quarantine? Would tens of thousands of deaths been better than asking travellers to check in for a couple of weeks on arrival, during a pandemic? I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. I'm British by the way. The UK also has guarded quarantine centres in hotels for people coming in from what it considers “red zones”
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    Quarantine for what? That's what you do with sick people. Whatever is going on in Australia has long ago left the realm of sane quarantine procedure. It will be 2022 soon, and the Australians are trying to prevent interstate spread of COVID-19. It's madness. Responding to your edit: still madness
    - Nursie 5y ago
      Quarantine for coronavirus, in a pandemic that’s claimed millions of lives. You quarantine people (and animal) who might be sick, that’s the point of it. It doesn’t look like madness to me when you look at the comparative death rates.
      - kongin 5y ago
        > Quarantine for coronavirus, in a pandemic that’s claimed millions of lives. So are we going to do a quarantine for the flu next? A pandemic that claims up to a 2 million lives a year globally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_States_flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_State...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        docmars 5y ago
        Precisely. It is the best cover up for global domination while distracting populations with concern trolling around a virus that is not all that significantly worse than the flu given the level of risk across all age groups. Heart failure and car accidents claim a higher risk.
        DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        For pandemic flu, yes, quarantine would be reasonable. The 1918 pandemic claimed tens of millions of lives.
        kongin 5y ago
        The 2017 flu season killed 200 Americans per million, world wide that amounts to 1,400,000 people. Should we have locked down in 2017?
        DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        Which means that CoVID-19 has had about 10 times the impact as seasonal flu. That's extremely serious.
        kongin 5y ago
        Which means that a bad flu season has had about 10% the impact of covid. That's extremely serious. Should we have locked down in 2017? What number of deaths is the magic one where we decide that it's too much and we need to close everything for years on end?
    - iamthemonster 5y ago
      I'm in Western Australia. I'm delighted with prevention of interstate Covid. The freedom to do whatever you want is pretty enjoyable to be honest, and not worrying that family members will die of Covid is even better.
      - logicchains 5y ago
        Do you worry about family members in lockdowned states drinking themselves to death? In Canada lockdowns killed more under-65s than covid: https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-under-65-than-covid-19-statscan/ https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-...
        chitowneats 5y ago
        New South Wales has a solution for this. Limit the alcohol allowance of individuals under lockdown: https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/nsw-health-limits-residents-of-lockeddown-tower-block-to-six-beers-per-day/news-story/0e387ceccee145a611ddb6e38872d3d5 https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/nsw-health-lim... I wish this was a joke, or fake news. But no, once they control where you can go, when you can go there, etc, it's not a big jump for them to demand control over what you put in your body. It's for your own safety, after all.
        bernulli 5y ago
        Of course it did, exactly because there was a lockdown that prevented many COVID deaths. If there hadn't been a lockdown, many more people would have died from COVID than now died from drinking. Sweden for example, famous for its non-lockdown, suffered 10 times as many COVID deaths than neighboring Norway with lock-down (and alcohol).
    - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
      Quarantine has never been strictly for sick people. It is for people who might possibly be infected. You can see this in the etymolgy of the word "quarantine": it refers to the forty days (quarantena in Venetian) that people arriving by ship were required to wait on board before disembarking in Venice during the time of the plague. The whole idea is to wait for the full incubation period of a pathogen, to make sure someone is not infected, before letting them out in the general society. In contrast, when someone is separated from society because they are known to be infected, that is called "isolation."
      - chitowneats 5y ago
        I'm familiar with the etymology. This makes a lot of sense for the bubonic plague. Frankly the Venetians would scoff at what we've done to our societies over a disease so tame (measured by overall rate of survival, individual circumstances can be tragic). It was also an era when people had few rights, no vaccines, no access to treatment. Surely, we should aspire to be better than 14th-century Venice. To not treat people as if they are nothing more than viral vectors. Instead many would trade away what little control over our own lives we still have in exchange for imagined safety from a virus we will all contract eventually. That the vast majority of people have no issues recovering from. It's not the plague. It's not Ebola. It's not the worst case scenario we were rightfully concerned about in early 2020. How this hasn't sunk in yet for most people is just baffling to me. Then I look around and see lots of motivated reasoning and state-sponsored propaganda about a permanent transition to remote work, increased government surveillance, curtailing the movement of citizens, and other social initiatives various coalitions were already working towards, that are of course suddenly "absolutely necessary" because of a "once in a lifetime pandemic", and it becomes a little clearer.
        docmars 5y ago
        Spot on, and once the endless waves of variants no longer convince the submissive within our populations that all of these massive changes to life are necessary, the same measures will be used during a questionably endless "climate crisis" to justify the retention of this newfound power they've gained. 1. https://ktrh.iheart.com/content/2021-06-01-after-covid-lockdowns-are-climate-lockdowns-next/ https://ktrh.iheart.com/content/2021-06-01-after-covid-lockd... 2. https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/out-covid-lockdowns-in-climate-change-lockdowns-n414196 https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/out-covid-lockdowns-... 3. https://www.guardiangazette.com/2021/08/30/climate-lockdowns-coming-soon-after-dhhs-declarers-climate-change-a-public-health-issue/ https://www.guardiangazette.com/2021/08/30/climate-lockdowns... And for those who aren't convinced, I'll be available to accept apologies at my nearest concentration camp.
  - crazym8 5y ago
    >Become like what? [...] >Would tens of thousands of deaths [...] Like that. It's absolutely insane to see young, Australian people completely embrace the Covid propaganda and totalitarian nonsense. Say what you want about boomers, but at least they used to be somewhat cool in their 20s, during the 70s. Having unprotected sex, doing drugs, having long hair, listening to rock'n'roll, protesting the wars. In Australia we have 25-year-old boomers, scared of absolutely everything, and cheering on the government to govern us even harder. A complete nightmare.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kongin 5y ago
  It's a third of Australia that's gone insane. The rest have checked out and completely ignored it. It's like a long holiday where you get paid to pretend you work. But you can't say that in polite company so you just have ~40 percent compliance with whatever insanity is going on now. Hilariously enough the compliance from police is lower than from the general population so basically we have politicians and the terminally online talking about masks, jabs and sign ins and the people who are supposed to enforce it not being bothered with it. Standing in front of the super market something like one in three pull out their phone, unlock it, point it at the check in qr code and not log in. I'm reminded of the latter days of the USSR where no one took anything the government said seriously and just did whatever they felt like. Which does not bode well for the current incarnation of Australia long term.
  - sk2020 5y ago
    >latter days of the USSR Is it better to prolong the perverse, decadent rule of the senators and consuls or to embrace Clovis? Hit ‘em with your Coriolanus swag.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      I'm familiar with Clovis (the Frankish king) and Coriolanus (the Shakespearean Roman), but I don't follow the connection you're trying to draw
      - sk2020 5y ago
        I mean to say the modern courtiers of the decrepit political class are the problem and warrior-kings at the head of barbarians are the solution. Hoppe would call this natural order.
hwers 5y ago
There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.
- iamthemonster 5y ago
  Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    Japan, with a population of around 126 million, only had 16,471 deaths so far from covid, a death rate of 0.013%. As a point of reference, there are around 20k suicide deaths annually in Japan. Japan didn't use harsh/legally enforced lockdowns; almost all their measures have been voluntary: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-surge-japan-sticks-lockdown-lite-2021-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-su....
    - indemnity 5y ago
      High social cohesion will do that.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshuahughes 5y ago
    When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time. Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Not from Australia, but as a citizen the precaution I would take is not to get tested while such a quarantine policy is in effect. Don't know, my country does some checks like calling people on the phone, the rest relies on trust. Seems to work just as well. So I see a lot of room to criticise "the least intrusive" option as well. This is security done wrong. Not slightly wrong, detrimental towards the goal of security. If people get uncompliant, no such measures will be efficient.
- lucideer 5y ago
  > Seems to work just as well. Curious what country this is where things are working "just as well" as Australia? The only major places I can think of in the "developed" world faring similarly* to Australia statistically (deaths per capita) are South Korea & Taiwan; both have had similar citizen monitoring. * leaving out NZ here obvs which is faring significantly better
  - thecoppinger 5y ago
    I live in NZ, and after a recent exposure to Covid, I experienced said daily check in calls from the government that really relied on trust (honesty) more than anything, as far as I’m aware — I suppose it’s possible they were tracking my phone in some way to ensure my location stayed contained/consistent? Seems highly unlikely though. I will add that if I’d been caught leaving the house, outside of a short daily workout, I’d have been liable for a fine and/or jail time.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Japan for example. Also an island, South Korea is too for all practical purposes. Australia isn't even half an Italy, although the population is admittedly mostly concentrated. Still, you have to compare it to countries which can only be reached by ship or plane. There is merit for harsh policies if you can prevent any case, what NZ did relatively successfully. But admitting that it failed is hard to convey politically.
    - lucideer 5y ago
sandworm101 5y ago
>> present an argument against I don't. My comment was to the nature of the "choice" not whether or not the mandate was warranted. Let's not pretend that people have options when they really don't. There is no need to dress it up. In times of disease, governments do sometimes order people to do things. Let's not kid ourselves. Personal choice, personal freedom, is set aside.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If you already understood that the quarantine is what is limiting people’s choice and not the app then why did you bring it up as an issue with the app?
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app and being sent to a facility, about how that isn't much of a choice. I would make the same comment if the "choice" was between a facility and a vaccine, or a drug, or counseling sessions, or paying a fine. Nearly anything is better than being sent to a camp and so any such binary alternative isn't much of a real choice.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app... Seems self-contradictory.
      - Frost1x 5y ago
        You have the choice to nose dive off the Burj Khalifa, sign over all of your assets to me, or record a chicken dance video and put it on YouTube. OP's point is giving a set of all undesirable options which under normal circumstances and given freedom, you would decline all the options. "Choice" tends to imply you have at least some desirable options or at least have the option to refuse all of the choice options (not choosing has to be an option in the proposed choice). If you're given a set of constrained options where you must choose and none of the choices are desirable, you're really given highly constrained freedom to the point no one considers it freedom. It's even worse when it's clear that most the constraints (choice options) point to only one option for any sane "chooser." Sure, you could jump off the Burj Khalifa but is that really a viable option? Pretty much everyone would record a chicken dance video and choose minimal public humiliation over the other options. I gave options but they're not really options, not from any sane decision making perspective. That is the illusion of choice to make people feel like they have control over direction. We have a lot of this going on in society these days, where people have options but the options lead to one obvious path, meaning they have no viable alternative options.
Ms-J 5y ago
You are presenting a false choice though.
satronaut 5y ago
you forgot number 4, be treated like an adult and just stay home for 2 weeks and not have the government check to see if you're at home like you're on house arrest while not having committed a crime
- pc86 5y ago
  "Government treating its citizens like adults" and "Australia" really do seem to be mutually exclusive at this point.
- mbesto 5y ago
  This a certainly an option but not a realistic one. Culturally speaking it's impossible to trust anyone (adult or otherwise) to comply with something like this.
- twic 5y ago
  > be treated like an adult and just stay home for 2 weeks Ah yes, that thing adults routinely do.
  - satronaut 5y ago
    People have been getting sick literally since the dawn of man. I knew many co-workers who'd come in with a cold or a fever and get the rest of the office sick. Now, there's a virus that's so dangerous you need a test to know if you're even sick with it but people are demanding everyone stays home so nobody catches it. If you don't want to catch it, stay home, but don't ask myself or others to change their behavior
elzbardico 5y ago
For a 0.03 IFR?
CountDrewku 5y ago
The "least" intrusive option is still a massive government overreach. They love doing this. We could just let you go back to normal if you only show us your papers please. This a is a mind game they're playing. Show you all the horrible things they could mandate to make the less horrible one sound better.
dougmwne 5y ago
The real least intrusive option would be to just ask people to quarantine and trust that they do it as their civic duty. You could also offer a small support check at the end if they completed the quarantine without being seen out of the house or offer payment if they download the app and allow location permission. There are so many ways to run a quarantine program without resorting to locking people away or making them use the equivalent of a house arrest bracelet. It's concerning that you don't even see how totalitarian this is. These people weren't convicted of any crime, they caught a highly contagious virus that we will never eradicate and will be living with for the rest of our lives.
b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
Did you just say you are under guard, being forced to stay in a hotel? And this is acceptable? Do you have covid, were you exposed to one person who had it? Did they provide proof of this or just tell you and cart you away? Bound to repeate history looks more and more valid everyday.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AndrewBissell 5y ago
I'll present an argument against quarantine being warranted: Covid-19 is an endemic virus for which there are no sterilizing vaccines and hence "zero Covid" policy frameworks are an insane and hopeless attempt to turn back the tides. You will either live under these restrictions for the rest of your lives, or give them up and eventually be exposed to the virus.
- javagram 5y ago
  Consider, however, that being exposed to the virus after being vaccinated reduces your risk of death and/or hospitalization by a factor of 10-20x. The assumption that there are “no sterilizing vaccines” is a little questionable too - even against Delta, the FDA approved vaccines are showing 40-50% immunity against infection, i.e. sterilizing immunity. Zero Covid countries like NZ and Australia that re-open to the world once their populations hit 80% vaccination will have prevented many deaths among their population.
dalmo3 5y ago
Quarantine in a hotel isn't scalable. You can't suddenly quarantine the whole population. Phone tracking is just a pen and paper away from that. The leap from 'tracking the infected' to 'tracking everyone because ~reasons~' is tiny, especially given the pace Australia is running towards stuff like that.

by Nursie 5y ago

chitowneats 5y ago

How did Australians become like this? In my imagination, my American ancestors were quite similar to yours. And yet...

Nursie 5y ago
Become like what? Do you have an argument against quarantine? Would tens of thousands of deaths been better than asking travellers to check in for a couple of weeks on arrival, during a pandemic? I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. I'm British by the way. The UK also has guarded quarantine centres in hotels for people coming in from what it considers “red zones”
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Quarantine for what? That's what you do with sick people. Whatever is going on in Australia has long ago left the realm of sane quarantine procedure. It will be 2022 soon, and the Australians are trying to prevent interstate spread of COVID-19. It's madness. Responding to your edit: still madness
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Quarantine for coronavirus, in a pandemic that’s claimed millions of lives. You quarantine people (and animal) who might be sick, that’s the point of it. It doesn’t look like madness to me when you look at the comparative death rates.
    - kongin 5y ago
      > Quarantine for coronavirus, in a pandemic that’s claimed millions of lives. So are we going to do a quarantine for the flu next? A pandemic that claims up to a 2 million lives a year globally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_States_flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_State...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - docmars 5y ago
        Precisely. It is the best cover up for global domination while distracting populations with concern trolling around a virus that is not all that significantly worse than the flu given the level of risk across all age groups. Heart failure and car accidents claim a higher risk.
      - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        For pandemic flu, yes, quarantine would be reasonable. The 1918 pandemic claimed tens of millions of lives.
        kongin 5y ago
        The 2017 flu season killed 200 Americans per million, world wide that amounts to 1,400,000 people. Should we have locked down in 2017?
        DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        Which means that CoVID-19 has had about 10 times the impact as seasonal flu. That's extremely serious.
        kongin 5y ago
        Which means that a bad flu season has had about 10% the impact of covid. That's extremely serious. Should we have locked down in 2017? What number of deaths is the magic one where we decide that it's too much and we need to close everything for years on end?
  - iamthemonster 5y ago
    I'm in Western Australia. I'm delighted with prevention of interstate Covid. The freedom to do whatever you want is pretty enjoyable to be honest, and not worrying that family members will die of Covid is even better.
    - logicchains 5y ago
      Do you worry about family members in lockdowned states drinking themselves to death? In Canada lockdowns killed more under-65s than covid: https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-under-65-than-covid-19-statscan/ https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-...
      - chitowneats 5y ago
        New South Wales has a solution for this. Limit the alcohol allowance of individuals under lockdown: https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/nsw-health-limits-residents-of-lockeddown-tower-block-to-six-beers-per-day/news-story/0e387ceccee145a611ddb6e38872d3d5 https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/nsw-health-lim... I wish this was a joke, or fake news. But no, once they control where you can go, when you can go there, etc, it's not a big jump for them to demand control over what you put in your body. It's for your own safety, after all.
      - bernulli 5y ago
        Of course it did, exactly because there was a lockdown that prevented many COVID deaths. If there hadn't been a lockdown, many more people would have died from COVID than now died from drinking. Sweden for example, famous for its non-lockdown, suffered 10 times as many COVID deaths than neighboring Norway with lock-down (and alcohol).
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    Quarantine has never been strictly for sick people. It is for people who might possibly be infected. You can see this in the etymolgy of the word "quarantine": it refers to the forty days (quarantena in Venetian) that people arriving by ship were required to wait on board before disembarking in Venice during the time of the plague. The whole idea is to wait for the full incubation period of a pathogen, to make sure someone is not infected, before letting them out in the general society. In contrast, when someone is separated from society because they are known to be infected, that is called "isolation."
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      I'm familiar with the etymology. This makes a lot of sense for the bubonic plague. Frankly the Venetians would scoff at what we've done to our societies over a disease so tame (measured by overall rate of survival, individual circumstances can be tragic). It was also an era when people had few rights, no vaccines, no access to treatment. Surely, we should aspire to be better than 14th-century Venice. To not treat people as if they are nothing more than viral vectors. Instead many would trade away what little control over our own lives we still have in exchange for imagined safety from a virus we will all contract eventually. That the vast majority of people have no issues recovering from. It's not the plague. It's not Ebola. It's not the worst case scenario we were rightfully concerned about in early 2020. How this hasn't sunk in yet for most people is just baffling to me. Then I look around and see lots of motivated reasoning and state-sponsored propaganda about a permanent transition to remote work, increased government surveillance, curtailing the movement of citizens, and other social initiatives various coalitions were already working towards, that are of course suddenly "absolutely necessary" because of a "once in a lifetime pandemic", and it becomes a little clearer.
      - docmars 5y ago
        Spot on, and once the endless waves of variants no longer convince the submissive within our populations that all of these massive changes to life are necessary, the same measures will be used during a questionably endless "climate crisis" to justify the retention of this newfound power they've gained. 1. https://ktrh.iheart.com/content/2021-06-01-after-covid-lockdowns-are-climate-lockdowns-next/ https://ktrh.iheart.com/content/2021-06-01-after-covid-lockd... 2. https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/out-covid-lockdowns-in-climate-change-lockdowns-n414196 https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/out-covid-lockdowns-... 3. https://www.guardiangazette.com/2021/08/30/climate-lockdowns-coming-soon-after-dhhs-declarers-climate-change-a-public-health-issue/ https://www.guardiangazette.com/2021/08/30/climate-lockdowns... And for those who aren't convinced, I'll be available to accept apologies at my nearest concentration camp.
- crazym8 5y ago
  >Become like what? [...] >Would tens of thousands of deaths [...] Like that. It's absolutely insane to see young, Australian people completely embrace the Covid propaganda and totalitarian nonsense. Say what you want about boomers, but at least they used to be somewhat cool in their 20s, during the 70s. Having unprotected sex, doing drugs, having long hair, listening to rock'n'roll, protesting the wars. In Australia we have 25-year-old boomers, scared of absolutely everything, and cheering on the government to govern us even harder. A complete nightmare.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kongin 5y ago
It's a third of Australia that's gone insane. The rest have checked out and completely ignored it. It's like a long holiday where you get paid to pretend you work. But you can't say that in polite company so you just have ~40 percent compliance with whatever insanity is going on now. Hilariously enough the compliance from police is lower than from the general population so basically we have politicians and the terminally online talking about masks, jabs and sign ins and the people who are supposed to enforce it not being bothered with it. Standing in front of the super market something like one in three pull out their phone, unlock it, point it at the check in qr code and not log in. I'm reminded of the latter days of the USSR where no one took anything the government said seriously and just did whatever they felt like. Which does not bode well for the current incarnation of Australia long term.
- sk2020 5y ago
  >latter days of the USSR Is it better to prolong the perverse, decadent rule of the senators and consuls or to embrace Clovis? Hit ‘em with your Coriolanus swag.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    I'm familiar with Clovis (the Frankish king) and Coriolanus (the Shakespearean Roman), but I don't follow the connection you're trying to draw
    - sk2020 5y ago
      I mean to say the modern courtiers of the decrepit political class are the problem and warrior-kings at the head of barbarians are the solution. Hoppe would call this natural order.

hwers 5y ago

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

iamthemonster 5y ago
Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.
- logicchains 5y ago
  Japan, with a population of around 126 million, only had 16,471 deaths so far from covid, a death rate of 0.013%. As a point of reference, there are around 20k suicide deaths annually in Japan. Japan didn't use harsh/legally enforced lockdowns; almost all their measures have been voluntary: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-surge-japan-sticks-lockdown-lite-2021-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-su....
  - indemnity 5y ago
    High social cohesion will do that.
Nursie 5y ago
Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time. Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Not from Australia, but as a citizen the precaution I would take is not to get tested while such a quarantine policy is in effect. Don't know, my country does some checks like calling people on the phone, the rest relies on trust. Seems to work just as well. So I see a lot of room to criticise "the least intrusive" option as well. This is security done wrong. Not slightly wrong, detrimental towards the goal of security. If people get uncompliant, no such measures will be efficient.

lucideer 5y ago
> Seems to work just as well. Curious what country this is where things are working "just as well" as Australia? The only major places I can think of in the "developed" world faring similarly* to Australia statistically (deaths per capita) are South Korea & Taiwan; both have had similar citizen monitoring. * leaving out NZ here obvs which is faring significantly better
- thecoppinger 5y ago
  I live in NZ, and after a recent exposure to Covid, I experienced said daily check in calls from the government that really relied on trust (honesty) more than anything, as far as I’m aware — I suppose it’s possible they were tracking my phone in some way to ensure my location stayed contained/consistent? Seems highly unlikely though. I will add that if I’d been caught leaving the house, outside of a short daily workout, I’d have been liable for a fine and/or jail time.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Japan for example. Also an island, South Korea is too for all practical purposes. Australia isn't even half an Italy, although the population is admittedly mostly concentrated. Still, you have to compare it to countries which can only be reached by ship or plane. There is merit for harsh policies if you can prevent any case, what NZ did relatively successfully. But admitting that it failed is hard to convey politically.
  - lucideer 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago

>> present an argument against I don't. My comment was to the nature of the "choice" not whether or not the mandate was warranted. Let's not pretend that people have options when they really don't. There is no need to dress it up. In times of disease, governments do sometimes order people to do things. Let's not kid ourselves. Personal choice, personal freedom, is set aside.

chrisseaton 5y ago
If you already understood that the quarantine is what is limiting people’s choice and not the app then why did you bring it up as an issue with the app?
- sandworm101 5y ago
  I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app and being sent to a facility, about how that isn't much of a choice. I would make the same comment if the "choice" was between a facility and a vaccine, or a drug, or counseling sessions, or paying a fine. Nearly anything is better than being sent to a camp and so any such binary alternative isn't much of a real choice.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app... Seems self-contradictory.
    - Frost1x 5y ago
      You have the choice to nose dive off the Burj Khalifa, sign over all of your assets to me, or record a chicken dance video and put it on YouTube. OP's point is giving a set of all undesirable options which under normal circumstances and given freedom, you would decline all the options. "Choice" tends to imply you have at least some desirable options or at least have the option to refuse all of the choice options (not choosing has to be an option in the proposed choice). If you're given a set of constrained options where you must choose and none of the choices are desirable, you're really given highly constrained freedom to the point no one considers it freedom. It's even worse when it's clear that most the constraints (choice options) point to only one option for any sane "chooser." Sure, you could jump off the Burj Khalifa but is that really a viable option? Pretty much everyone would record a chicken dance video and choose minimal public humiliation over the other options. I gave options but they're not really options, not from any sane decision making perspective. That is the illusion of choice to make people feel like they have control over direction. We have a lot of this going on in society these days, where people have options but the options lead to one obvious path, meaning they have no viable alternative options.

Ms-J 5y ago

You are presenting a false choice though.

satronaut 5y ago

you forgot number 4, be treated like an adult and just stay home for 2 weeks and not have the government check to see if you're at home like you're on house arrest while not having committed a crime

pc86 5y ago
"Government treating its citizens like adults" and "Australia" really do seem to be mutually exclusive at this point.
mbesto 5y ago
This a certainly an option but not a realistic one. Culturally speaking it's impossible to trust anyone (adult or otherwise) to comply with something like this.
twic 5y ago
> be treated like an adult and just stay home for 2 weeks Ah yes, that thing adults routinely do.
- satronaut 5y ago
  People have been getting sick literally since the dawn of man. I knew many co-workers who'd come in with a cold or a fever and get the rest of the office sick. Now, there's a virus that's so dangerous you need a test to know if you're even sick with it but people are demanding everyone stays home so nobody catches it. If you don't want to catch it, stay home, but don't ask myself or others to change their behavior

elzbardico 5y ago

For a 0.03 IFR?

CountDrewku 5y ago

The "least" intrusive option is still a massive government overreach. They love doing this. We could just let you go back to normal if you only show us your papers please. This a is a mind game they're playing. Show you all the horrible things they could mandate to make the less horrible one sound better.

dougmwne 5y ago

The real least intrusive option would be to just ask people to quarantine and trust that they do it as their civic duty. You could also offer a small support check at the end if they completed the quarantine without being seen out of the house or offer payment if they download the app and allow location permission. There are so many ways to run a quarantine program without resorting to locking people away or making them use the equivalent of a house arrest bracelet. It's concerning that you don't even see how totalitarian this is. These people weren't convicted of any crime, they caught a highly contagious virus that we will never eradicate and will be living with for the rest of our lives.

b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago

Did you just say you are under guard, being forced to stay in a hotel? And this is acceptable? Do you have covid, were you exposed to one person who had it? Did they provide proof of this or just tell you and cart you away? Bound to repeate history looks more and more valid everyday.

deleted 5y ago

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AndrewBissell 5y ago

I'll present an argument against quarantine being warranted: Covid-19 is an endemic virus for which there are no sterilizing vaccines and hence "zero Covid" policy frameworks are an insane and hopeless attempt to turn back the tides. You will either live under these restrictions for the rest of your lives, or give them up and eventually be exposed to the virus.

javagram 5y ago
Consider, however, that being exposed to the virus after being vaccinated reduces your risk of death and/or hospitalization by a factor of 10-20x. The assumption that there are “no sterilizing vaccines” is a little questionable too - even against Delta, the FDA approved vaccines are showing 40-50% immunity against infection, i.e. sterilizing immunity. Zero Covid countries like NZ and Australia that re-open to the world once their populations hit 80% vaccination will have prevented many deaths among their population.

dalmo3 5y ago

Quarantine in a hotel isn't scalable. You can't suddenly quarantine the whole population. Phone tracking is just a pen and paper away from that. The leap from 'tracking the infected' to 'tracking everyone because ~reasons~' is tiny, especially given the pace Australia is running towards stuff like that.